Kissed a Sad Goodbye

by Deborah Crombie

  “Did we get Martin Lowell’s girlfriend’s statement?” Gemma asked.

  “It’s here somewhere.” Janice dabbed at the bread crumbs that had fallen on the papers nearest at hand, then reshuffled them until she found the relevant copy. “Brandy Bannister, aged nineteen, resident of—”

  Washing down a bite of her tuna on brown bread with a sip of tepid coffee, Gemma snorted dangerously, precipitating a fit of coughing. “Brandy Bannister?” she sputtered when she had recovered sufficiently. “Suits her. You could almost feel sorry for her if she weren’t such a nit.”

  “That bad?”

  When Gemma nodded, mouth full, Janice continued, “It is a bit unfortunate. You always wonder what parents could have been thinking.” She looked back at the report. “At any rate, Brandy says she was with Martin Lowell from eight o’clock on, when they had dinner at the Trafalgar Tavern. They left the tavern about eleven and went directly to her flat, where they gave one another full body massages”—Janice raised an eyebrow—“and she says she’s sure she’d have known if he’d left at any time during the night.”

  “Full body massages? Not the kind that would pass a licensing board.”

  “Like that, was it? Do you think she’s a reliable alibi, or would she lie to protect him?”

  “I think she’s too witless to carry off anything more complicated than saying she’s sure he stayed the entire night when she actually slept like a log—and if Martin killed Annabelle he’d have needed a bigger fabrication than that.”

  Janice glanced at the statement again. “How so?”

  “Annabelle would’ve had to contact him in the missing two hours, between the time both Mortimer and Gordon Finch say they saw her last: around ten, and before midnight, when the pathologist estimates she died.” Frowning, Gemma took another bite of tuna sandwich. “Let’s send someone round the Trafalgar—see if we can confirm they were there and stayed until eleven.”

  “It’s a big place, lots of traffic. But suppose we can confirm it, what’s to say Martin didn’t go directly back to his flat and find Annabelle waiting for him?”

  “I guarantee you Martin Lowell didn’t take Brandy out for a nice evening of intellectual stimulation and kiss her good night at her door.”

  “Well, what if he stopped off at his flat for condoms or something, found Annabelle waiting for him, and killed her there? Then he went on to Brandy’s flat for a good time, got up in the wee hours and went back to his flat, stuffed Annabelle’s body in the boot of his car, and dumped her in the park,” Janice suggested.

  “I suppose it’s possible. But he’d have to carry her body across the open courtyard of his building—not a very safe prospect even in the middle of the night. And he has a very nosy neighbor. We might send a PC to have a word.” Gemma finished her coffee and tossed the cup in the rubbish bin.

  “What about Teresa Robbins? Anything new on Mortimer from her?”

  “Only what we should have guessed from the beginning—she’s quite besotted with him, or at least she was until she learned Reg hadn’t told her what he knew about Annabelle’s affairs.”

  “That would give Teresa a motive,” mused Janice. “What if Annabelle went to see Teresa that night—she was that upset, wanted a friend to talk to—”

  “And Teresa decided to kill her so she could have Mortimer for herself? Why not let nature take its course? It doesn’t sound as though Reg and Annabelle were likely to have patched things up.”

  “She could have helped Mortimer, though, if he killed Annabelle.” Janice poked distastefully at the remains of her tomato on white. “And he’s still the best fit for it, in my opinion.”

  “Except for the fact that if he killed her elsewhere, he’d no way of moving her. And I can’t imagine how he’d have convinced her to go to the Mudchute when she was alive.”

  “Maybe he followed her, saw her meeting someone else?” Janice met Gemma’s eyes.

  “Gordon Finch?” they said at the same time.

  Then Janice shook her head. “But why would she meet him in the park? It’s the same problem as with Mortimer, and Finch doesn’t own a car, either. His landlady didn’t provide him an alibi, by the way. Says she has no idea when, or if, he came home that night, and she’s not sure she’d have noticed if he’d had a visitor.”

  The strength of Gemma’s disappointment surprised her. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d hoped that someone would provide him an unshakable alibi for the time of Annabelle’s murder. “I wonder,” she said slowly. “If we assume it was Gordon she meant when she told Reg she was in love with someone else … why did Annabelle call Lewis Finch?”

  “When Gordon turned her down, she took the next available number?” Janice offered.

  “I don’t believe that. Not when she’d just told Reg she wouldn’t settle for anything less than the real thing. Maybe she wanted a shoulder to cry on—”

  “Lewis Finch? Not bloody likely! Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Lewis,” warned Janice. “And don’t be lulled by his well-barbered looks and Savile Row suits into thinking money’s made him soft. The man’s a shark, and he’s bloody relentless when he’s after something.” Janice scowled. “Which reminds me—I’ve been doing a bit of inquiring. With the idea of a connection between the Finches and the Hammonds, I remembered I’d heard a rumor or two that made me curious, so I stood the head of the Neighborhood Association a few pints.

  “It seems that for the past several years, Finch, Ltd. has shown an extremely active interest in buying the Hammond’s warehouse. The company has developed several similar riverfront properties, and Hammond’s occupies a prime location, one of the last holdouts in what’s now almost entirely a residential or mixed residential/commercial area.”

  “But nothing came of it?”

  “No. Apparently, William Hammond refused to sell, and he still maintains a controlling interest in the firm, even though Annabelle had taken over as managing director. What’s odd is that Finch has apparently passed up a couple of similar properties in the last year.” Janice swirled the remains of the coffee in her cup, grimaced at it, then set it down and lit a cigarette. “This is just the sort of project that Gordon would actively protest.”

  “Why?” Gemma brushed the last crumbs from her blouse and settled into a more comfortable position in the hard plastic chair.

  “You have to understand what happened here. The last of the Docks closed in the late seventies, and by the early eighties the Island was a rotting wasteland. I know because I watched it happen as I grew up, and by the time I finished school the prospects were bugger all.” Janice shook her head. “But there are those who criticize any development on the Island—they hate the yuppie in-comers and the disintegration of the old neighborhoods, they’re angry because there’s less and less housing available to the working-class people who made the Island what it is—”

  “And that’s how Gordon Finch feels?” Gemma asked.

  “The paradox is that without the development, the Island would have become a massive slum in the last ten or fifteen years, and I think he’s reasonable enough to see that. But there are problems and conflicts of interest that could be handled more sensitively.” Janice sighed and tapped ash into the tin ashtray on the desk. “The irony is that both Gordon and Lewis Finch want to preserve the Island, and their aims aren’t necessarily incompatible. I see both sides every day, and there are concerns that need addressing. You can’t have the sort of massive redevelopment we’ve undergone on the Island without mistakes and excesses—but I’m no dinosaur: I’d not see things go back to the way they were.”

  Gemma doodled on the page of her open notebook as her mind sorted details. “If Lewis Finch has been aggressively pursuing Hammond’s property, why didn’t he mention it when we saw him? He admitted to the affair with Annabelle readily enough.”

  “My mate knew about that, too.”

  “Did he?” said Gemma, thinking that she was finding it more and more difficult to b
elieve that Gordon hadn’t. “Did he know about Gordon and Annabelle, then?”

  “No, that one was a proper shocker.”

  Slowly, Gemma said, “What if Annabelle’s interest in Gordon and his family had to do with the possible sale of the Hammond’s property, rather than rebellion against her father’s strictures? Remember, Gordon said she sought him out.”

  “Surely Gordon Finch couldn’t have slept with the woman for months without finding out what she was up to—and that’s assuming he wasn’t already aware of his father’s interest in the property. My mate in the Neighborhood Association is the world’s worst gossip, and if he knew …”

  Gemma was beginning to feel she’d been played for a fool all round. Snapping her notebook closed, she stood up. “I’m going to have another word with him.”

  “Gordon? What about Lewis?”

  “I want the truth from Gordon before I tackle his father. I’ll ring you in a bit.” Ignoring the thought of the friction it had caused with Kincaid the last time she’d paid Gordon a visit, she gave Janice a farewell wave and took off.

  LEAVING HER CAR IN THE LIMEHOUSE car park, Gemma walked the short distance down West India Dock Road and caught the DLR at Westferry Station. She’d had a sudden desire to see the Island from the elevated train, and the thought of her car’s metamorphosis into a traveling oven in the afternoon heat made the prospect seem even more inviting. Clouds had begun to build as the day wore on, as they had yesterday, but a storm had yet to break the heat’s grip on the city.

  As the train slid into the Canary Wharf Station, Gemma looked up at the soaring glass arch of the terminal and thought about the Island. The architecture of the terminal echoed the great Victorian railway stations in boldly modern terms, as perhaps Canary Wharf itself expressed the same optimism and opportunism that had driven the Victorians who conceived the great docks.

  The pneumatic doors closed with a sigh and the train moved on, crossing the middle section of the West India Docks. Office buildings and expensive flats filled the waterfront spaces once occupied by the warehouses, while sailboats and Windsurfers vied with the ghosts of the great ships that had unloaded their cargoes here.

  If progress was inevitable, it seemed that Lewis Finch had done what he could to save the buildings themselves, adapting them to new uses, while Gordon strove to preserve the unique social structure of the Island, and to her it seemed a shame that father and son were unable to reach a compromise.

  The train made a sharp left after the main section of the West India Docks, stopping at South Quay Station, where the damage from the IRA bomb that had exploded in the car park was still visible; then it turned right again to parallel the north-south Millwall Dock. To her right was the London Arena, followed on the left by Teresa Robbins’s building and the ASDA Superstore. Beyond that were the high banks of Mudchute Park and the hoardings that hid the construction at Mudchute Station.

  After Mudchute the train seemed to spring into the open, crossing the expanse of Millwall Park on the old Millwall viaduct. She caught a glimpse of East Ferry Road, and of the bowling green nestled in the walls of the Dockland Settlement, then they were crossing over Manchester Road and pulling into Island Gardens Station.

  As she left the train she stood for a moment on the elevated platform, looking down at Annabelle’s flat and just to the left, where she knew the entrance to the foot tunnel lay hidden by the trees of Island Gardens. She had a sense of imprinting the geography of place and players on her mind, a framework for the pattern of events that had led to Annabelle Hammond’s death—then she ran down the circular stairs and set out to look for Gordon Finch.

  She tried the park first, and next the tunnel, but the spot under the plane tree was empty, and the guitar player had taken up the pitch in the tunnel again, prompting Gemma to wonder how he could possibly scrape together a living from busking. Tossing a few coins of condolence into his case, she turned away and climbed back up into the sunlight.

  When she emerged from the tunnel, she turned left into Ferry Street at Annabelle’s flat and followed it until it made a sharp right angle at the Ferry House pub—the route Reg Mortimer said he had taken the night of Annabelle’s death. At Manchester Road, Ferry Street became East Ferry Road, and a short walk brought her to Gordon Finch’s flat. How easily, thought Gemma, Annabelle could have left the tunnel and gone either to the pub or the flat, and she wondered suddenly where Lewis Finch lived. Gordon had said that his father had moved back to the Island—perhaps near his office? She made a mental note to check the address when she got back to the station.

  Today, no sound of the clarinet came from the flat’s open windows. Gemma crossed the road and knocked at the blue door, telling herself that he might be busking at South Ken today, or even in Islington.

  But after a moment, the door opened and Gordon stared at her groggily. “Gemma?”

  “Did I wake you?” she asked. His hair stood even more on end than usual, and one side of his face bore faint crease marks, as if from prolonged contact with a wrinkled sheet.

  He shook his head as if to clear it, said, “I suppose you did,” then added, “I sat in on a recording session last night; didn’t finish until dawn.” He yawned. “If you’ve come to interrogate me, you’d better come in. Just let me put on some coffee.” There was a click of toenails as Sam came down the stairs, and after a questioning look at his master, he went out into the small side garden and efficiently did his business.

  When the dog had finished, Gemma followed them both up the stairs. The flat looked very much as she’d seen it before, except that the narrow bed was unmade. Sam stretched out beside it with a sigh and closed his eyes.

  “He’s getting too old for such late nights,” said Gordon, giving up his attempt to straighten the covers. “Though you’d have thought he slept just as much at the studio.” He squatted to rub the dog’s ears. “I suppose he doesn’t care for his routine being disrupted.” Standing again, he gestured at the small table. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you,” he said, but Gemma couldn’t detect any evident sarcasm. As he disappeared into the bathroom, he added, “I won’t be a minute.”

  When he returned a few moments later, his hair had been smoothed down and his shirt buttoned the remainder of the way.

  He put water on to boil and took a cafetière and a bag of ground coffee from the cupboard in the small kitchen. As he spooned out the coffee, he gave Gemma a questioning look, but she shook her head. “No thanks. I just had some at the station, unspeakable as it was. You’d think it was a deliberate attempt to poison us.”

  Hearing herself sound idiotic, she quelled any further impulse to babble by asking, “What were you recording?”

  “Some mates of mine in a rock band wanted a clarinet solo on one of their tracks.”

  “Do you do much studio work?” she said, her natural curiosity providing her an easy avenue.

  Gordon shrugged as he poured the hot water over the coffee. “I never turn down an offer—makes a break from busking.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought that many bands used clarinets.”

  “I play anything—jazz, classical, even backing for adverts; I’m not a bloody music snob. It works both ways, you know.” He glanced up at her as he poured coffee into one of the two mugs he seemed to own. “The rock guys who think classical is rubbish are just as stupid as the classical blokes who think rock is rubbish.”

  Blowing across the top of his cup, he took an experimental sip, then sat down opposite her, his eyes now clear and focused. “So, Sergeant, what is it you want from me today?”

  “The truth.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I thought we’d done that.”

  Gemma plunged in. “You must have known your father was interested in buying the Hammond’s warehouse and developing the property. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Hammond’s? You mean Annabelle’s business? Why should I have known that?” he answered reasonably. “I haven’t seen my father in—”

 
; “It was common enough knowledge that your mate in the Neighborhood Association knew about it. You expect me to believe he neglected to mention it to you? And that’s assuming you hadn’t heard it already from someone else.”

  Gordon stared at her, his face expressionless. “My father buys properties all the time—it’s what he does. Why should anyone have bothered to mention one he hadn’t managed to acquire? You’re giving significance to things after the fact that hadn’t any before, Sergeant.”

  She stared back at him, regrouping. “All right, let’s try it from the other direction. All those questions you said Annabelle asked you about your family—were some of them about your father’s business?”

  “They might have been, I suppose, but I’d not have thought anything of it—people tend to be curious about him.”

  “And you never wondered, when she sought you out and seduced you, if she might have had some ulterior motive?”

  “Are you saying she needed one?” His eyes met hers in a challenge.

  Gemma felt the color rising in her face. “I think that once you learned who Annabelle was, you’d have made sure you heard anything that had to do with Hammond’s, and especially if your father happened to be involved. What I don’t understand is why you’re lying about it.”

  When he didn’t answer, she continued, “I think you knew about your father and Annabelle. I think you knew about your father’s interest in her business. And I think you’ve lied to me from the beginning about your feelings for Annabelle. She was in love with you. That’s what she told you that night, wasn’t it?”

  Gordon’s knuckles whitened on his coffee mug. His voice dangerously calm, he said, “You know fuck-all about it. Nothing was about love with Annabelle. It was about power. I’m not stupid, Gemma, and I was only willing to be used for so long—”